IRisk Lab Spring 2021 Projects

A Primer on Peer-to-Peer Insurance for Practitioners

Peer-to-peer (P2P) insurance is a decentralized network in which participants pool their resources together to compensate those who suffer losses. It is a revival of a centuries-old practice in many ancient societies where members care for each other’s financial needs in the event of misfortune. With the aid of internet technology, P2P insurance is becoming a transparent, high-tech and low-cost alternative to traditional insurance and is viewed by many as a huge disruptor to the traditional insurance industry in the same way Uber is to the taxi industry. 

Despite the fast-changing landscape in this field, there has been very little literature to explore the theoretical underpinning of P2P insurance. Our research team at the University of Illinois have developed a novel quantitative framework for the design and engineering of P2P insurance. We are recently commissioned by the Casualty Actuarial Society to develop a review of existing business models and rising opportunities and challenges for practicing actuaries. Financial support will be provided for all students participating in this project. 

Students: Brandon Pazmino , Maya Ramahi, Karen Allena, Lavanya Srivastava, Runzhou Wang

Yixiao Xiong, Sally Seo

Supervisor: Runhuan Feng

Graduate Supervisor: Samal Abdikerimova

COUNTRY Financial Business Owner’s Policy (BOP) Loss Predictive Model

For the insurance industry, the potential to understand customers and businesses using new dimensions represented by social and other online data can unleash significant new insights from both customer behavior and risk perspective. These insights can drive insurance automation, underwriting efficiency, and enhanced customer experience. The objective of this project is to develop the loss prediction model empowered by those insurtech innovations. 

This project is a real-life actuarial data science project provided by Carpe Data and COUNTRY Financial. Carpe Data (https://carpe.io) is an Insurtech company that provides insurance companies with next-generation data solutions to gain a more in-depth insight into risks.  COUNTRY Financial (https://www.countryfinancial.com) is a US insurance and financial services company that offers a range of insurance and financial products and services, including auto, home, life, commercial insurance, etc. We will perform tasks including, but not limited to: 

  • Actuarial loss modeling 
  • Feature engineering using NLP 
  • Unsupervised/Supervised Learning 

Students: Emmelyn Luveta, Haoming Yang, Jingbin Cao, Man Chong Chan,

Jize Jiang, Christopher Kim,  Victoria Meng,  Zhaohong Wang,  Zihao Xia 

Supervisors: Zhiyu (Frank) Quan, Project Manager from Carpe Data,

       Lois She-Tom (Actuarial manager from COUNTRY Financial) 

Graduate Supervisor: Changyue Hu

Pekin Insurance General Liability Insurance(GL) Loss Predictive Model

For the insurance industry, the potential to understand customers and businesses using new dimensions represented by social and other online data can unleash significant new insights from both customer behavior and risk perspective. These insights can drive insurance automation, underwriting efficiency, and enhanced customer experience.

This project is a real-life actuarial data science project provided by Carpe Data. Carpe Data (https://carpe.io) is an Insurtech company that provides insurance companies with next-generation data solutions to gain a more in-depth insight into risks. Pekin Insurance (https://www.pekininsurance.com) is a leading Illinois-based insurer that offers personal and commercial insurance products. Pekin operates as a group of four companies, providing varied coverage in a number of states. ​We will perform tasks, including but not limited to

  • Actuarial loss modeling
  • Feature engineering using NLP
  • Unsupervised/Supervised Learning

Students: Qingxuan Kong, Ruiqi Liu, Sophia Wang, Zhehui Chen, Priyansh Barodia, Jiusi Li, 

Puja Patel, Carol Song, Hui Yang, Quanyu Zuo

Supervisors: Zhiyu (Frank) Quan, Claudia Freiji, Project Manager from Carpe Data,

      Actuarial Manager from Pekin Insurance 

Graduate Supervisor: Linfeng Zhang